Speaker
Description
Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers (CRESST) is a direct dark matter (DM) detection experiment located in the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy. The experiment operates scintillating crystals at cryogenic temperatures to search for nuclear recoils from DM particles and has achieved a threshold of $\sim$10 eV in its third phase (CRESST III). The sensitivity to measure small energy depositions makes CRESST one of the leading experiments in sub-GeV DM searches. A major challenge for all direct low-mass DM searches with solid state detectors is the presence of an unknown event population at very low energies, called the low energy excesses (LEE). The scientific effort at CRESST in the latest run has been primarily towards the understanding of the origin of this excess.
This talk will provide an overview of CRESST, highlighting the latest results from the experiment, and the plans for the future.